Robert Browne - Down Among the Dead Men

And the only way you’d stop him from seeking out the truth…

…was with a well-placed bullet.

He spent the rest of the night in his car.

After leaving Ainsworth’s ranch, he’d started to feel a little woozy, so he drove out of Montoya and found a nearly deserted Walmart parking lot in a neighboring suburb.

He pulled into a spot near a brick wall, put his suitcase in the trunk (hesitating only slightly before lifting the lid), then curled up in the Toyota’s backseat and shut his eyes.

By the time he opened them again, the sun was shining and the lot was full.

Vargas went into Walmart and bought himself an Egg McMuffin at the McDonald’s inside. Around about his third bite, however, he started thinking about eggs and Ainsworth and the bodies in that living room, and felt a little queasy.

Before leaving Ainsworth’s house, he had picked up the phone, dialed 911, then left the receiver off the hook.

He knew he should have done more, but that would only have resulted in a lot of questions from a lot of angry cops, and that wasn’t a battle he could afford to get into. At least the bodies would be found a lot sooner than Mr. Blister and his buddies had planned.

Tossing the McMuffin in the trash can, Vargas went into the restroom and washed his face. The bandage on his head was getting bloody, so he removed it, soaked up some of the remaining blood with a few paper towels, then found the health and beauty section of the store and picked up some gauze and tape.

Before he hit the register, he searched the sporting-goods section for a hat to cover the wound and settled on a gray and red Texas Rangers baseball cap.

Back in his car, he did his best to tape himself up again, including a fresh new bandage on his hand, then pulled the Rangers cap down tight, started the engine, and drove.

Heading back up to Las Cruces, he took the 10, driving 270 miles to Tucson, Arizona, before cutting down through Green Valley and rolling on into Nogales.

He could probably have entered Mexico through El Paso again but figured the farther away he stayed from that particular border station, the better off he’d be. There was no telling who might be working for Mr. Blister’s friends, and-assuming they were still alive-Vargas figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

He was, after all, the scared little bunny. And the longer Mr. Blister believed that, the better off Vargas would be.

He was just about five miles out of Nogales when he heard a news report on his radio:

“Sources say a high-ranking Border Patrol agent and two unidentified men were found dead on a ranch in El Paso, Texas, this morning. Police are investigating, and the source tells Eyewitness News that a motive for the crime has yet to be established.”

Vargas felt another wave of nausea as he listened. If he didn’t know before just how lucky he was that they’d let him go, he certainly knew it now.

Getting through the border station in Nogales was an effortless enterprise. Nobody cares if you go into Mexico. The more money you spend, the more they’ll love you. It’s the reverse trip that creates all the headaches. America’s racist paranoia clearly broadcast 24/7.

Once he was across, he found a motel and checked in for the rest of the day. He was feeling woozy again and needed to sleep. He bought a couple of quesadillas at a lunch wagon parked outside the motel and washed them down with a bottle of lime Jarritos.

Then he crawled into bed, staring up at the rotating blades of the ceiling fan. Today was even hotter than yesterday, and he wondered if this heat wave would ever pass.

As he lay there, thinking about the house in the desert, he took the passport photo from his back pocket and studied it.

This American woman, whoever she was, had mischievous eyes and a million-dollar smile. The kind of woman men get in bar fights over. The kind who makes you regret you ever got involved with her in the first place, no matter how good she is in bed.

Maybe that’s why she was in that house with a bullet in her chest.

Maybe she’d pushed someone too far.

Tomorrow morning-Monday-Vargas would get up well before dawn and take Highway 2 back into Ciudad Juarez. By the time he got there, the state police station would be open and Rojas was bound to be in his office.

But no whitewash this time. No missing crime scene photos or doctored police reports.

Vargas wasn’t about to take any bullshit from Rojas.

This time he wanted the fucking truth.

Rojas wasn’t in his office.

Even though Vargas had gotten a 3:00 A.M. start, the drive to Juarez had been interminably long and almost unbearably hot, and by the time he reached the state police station he felt as if he’d taken a bath in his own sweat.

The bandage on his head had become so drenched that he’d pulled it off and left it off, simply covering the damage with his new baseball cap. The bleeding seemed to have stopped anyway.

Parking his car, he went inside to blessed air-conditioning and found the homicide unit. The office looked the same as before: A reception counter adjacent to a waist-high entry gate. Dingy beige walls decorated with newspaper clippings and photos of wanted suspects. A half-dozen cluttered desks butted up against one another.

Today, they were all empty except one, where a young detective was leaning back in his chair, talking on a cell phone. Vargas remembered seeing him the last time he was here, but they’d never been introduced.

He waited, trying not to listen in on the conversation. The detective was speaking Spanish, but Vargas had no trouble understanding him. Growing up, Vargas had been trapped in a kind of limbo between two cultures, raised in a country that spoke English by parents who rarely ever did. A lot of the time he found himself thinking in Spanish, but in these last few days he’d been bouncing back and forth between the United States and Mexico so frequently that he’d begun to blend the two languages, sometimes forgetting where he was.

“Come on, Carmelita,” the detective said. “You know she means nothing to me. She asked for a ride, so I gave her one.”

He nodded to Vargas and held up a finger, indicating he’d be with him in a moment.

“No, baby, that’s not true. If I wanted to be with her, I would have stayed married to her. Look, I gotta go. You still want me to come by tonight?” He listened a moment, then smiled. “That’s my girl. See you around eleven.”

He clicked off, looked up at Vargas. He was a handsome kid with a wisp of hair above his lip that was supposed to be a mustache. He kept his piece in a shoulder holster, trying hard to look like Steve McQueen in Bullitt but not quite pulling it off.

“You have a girlfriend?” he asked.

Vargas shook his head. “Not lately.”

“Do yourself a favor and keep it that way. I give my ex a ride home, and now I’ll be spending the night apologizing for it. Women are nothing but trouble.”

It was Vargas’s experience-with few exceptions-that women were only trouble if you treated them that way, but he wasn’t about to argue with the guy. Someone his age wouldn’t get it anyway.

Instead, Vargas said, “I’m looking for Rojas.”

The detective got to his feet, came over to the counter. “You’re the reporter, right? You were here last week.”

“That’s right,” Vargas said. “Is he around?”

“Not at the moment, no. You here about the casa murders again?”

“Yes.”

“That case is as good as dead. Not one lead. I did some of the footwork on it, and we got nothing.”

“Maybe I can help you with that.”

The detective’s eyebrows went up. “You have information?”